Recipes: Celebrate Summer With These ‘Pretty in Pink’ Cocktails

We love to think pink. It’s one of our most powerful colours, even if its facade is demure. Considered among the happiest of colours, pink is also calming and, perhaps most importantly, one of unconditional love.

Kindness is also symbolic within the colour pink, and we could all use a little kindness and to spread love and kindness to one another. Sensitivity, compassion and femininity round out pink’s representation. 

Just in time for the warmer weather, we’ve gathered a collection of pink gin cocktails — including some gin made right here in Canada — to help us kick back and relax.

So go ahead, spread a little kindness, love and treat yourself.

 

Watermelon Sugar

 

romeo’s gin, which launched in Montreal in 2015, is introducing its latest flavour: romeo’s gin X. The “anti-pink gin,” which achieved success during its 2020 launch in Québec (where the distiller is based), features a bold watermelon zing. The watermelon distillate, added to romeo’s gin and its existing juniper, cucumber, lavender, dill, lemon and almond base aromas, is a fruity, balanced and refreshing serve. The bottle, too, is a work of art: romeo’s gin X reflects a unique co-creation between romeo’s gin and Montréal artist Miss Me, where the artist transformed the bottle. It explores the power of the “X” symbol, recurrent throughout Miss Me’s work. The symbol exists as a contrast between harmony and conflict, which summarizes the romeo’s gin x Miss Me collaboration.

Ingredients

1 ½ oz of romeo’s gin X
½ oz of sherry solera medium
¾ oz of fresh lemon juice
½ oz of grapefruit juice
½ oz of grenadine
2 dashes of Bittered Sling Suius Cherry bitters
1 oz of egg white
Garnish: half grapefruit wheel

Instructions

1. Grab a Collins or tall glass; a cocktail shaker, a strainer and ice.
2. Combine all ingredients into a shaker and add only one ice cube.
3. Shake your cocktail to get your egg whites extra frothy.
4. Fill the shaker with more ice, and hard shake.
5. Fine strain your cocktail into a Collins glass with fresh ice.
6. Garnish with large, half grapefruit wheel (optional)

 

Rose Spritz

 

Glendalough Distillery, in County Wicklow, Ireland, has been making whiskey (which translates from the gaelic as “water of life”) for more than a decade. Glendalough is also a beautiful area of the county known as the Garden of Ireland and is famous for its monastery, whose patron is St. Kevin. It is visited by more than 1.2 million a year, and the saint also stars on every bottle.

Now comes Glendalough Rose Gin. This fresh, rose-petal gin was first made to honour Rose, the head distiller’s mom, for a toast at his little brother’s wedding. Rose had recently passed away and this was his way to have her there in spirit — literally. Carefully-tended flowers from her rose garden are slowly vapour-distilled with hand-foraged wild roses and plants from the mountains around the distillery to make this an intensely floral gin. After distilling, the gin is then further infused with even more roses to deepen the flavours and give it its lovely pink hue. 

Nose: Very aromatic, with soft juniper notes, perfumed with fresh rose.

Taste: Gentle sweet spice, with distinct rose petal, bright berries, citrus with a nectar sweetness.

Finish: Long, floral, rose petals.

Ingredients

2 oz Glendalough Rose Gin
1 oz Fresh Lime Juice
Top with a Grapefruit Soda, such as Fever-Tree Sparkling Pink Grapefruit

Instructions

1. Pour the Rose Gin into an ice-filled glass (we like a balloon-shaped goblet, but any glass will do).
2. Add 1 oz of fresh lime juice. Top off with grapefruit soda. Garnish with a grapefruit wheel and freshly torn and slapped sprig of mint.

 

Pink Rose & Tonic

 

A no-alcohol option comes to us from Ceder’s, inspired by the botanicals of South Africa and distilled and bottled in Sweden. The makers produce distilled non-alcoholic gin in four flavours, with the newest being Ceder’s Pink Rose (rose hibiscus). It joins classic (juniper), crisp (citrus cucumber) and wild (ginger rooibos). It’s also vegan and gluten-free and low calorie as well.

Ingredients

50ml Pink Rose Distilled Non-Alcoholic
150ml Premium tonic, such as Fever-Tree

Instructions

1. Build ingredients in a highball glass over ice.
2. Garnish with raspberries and mint.

 

Royal Spring Flush

 

One of our favourite new discoveries is Royalmount Gin. It’s made in Montreal by brothers Alex and Matthew Mikus, along with their mother, Maureen David, who is the co-owner of 1769 Distillery along with her husband (and the boys’ dad, Andrew Mikus). 

And, although the gin’s not pink, the bottle is so beautiful with it’s blush-pink roses in bloom artwork, you may not want to open it. Plus, it will look absolutely smashing on your bar. The gin, however, is so delicious, with its fresh citrusy cucumber notes, we highly recommend you crack it open and mix up this signature cocktail. 

The recipe for the Royal Spring Flush was created for Royalmount by Monica Carbonell — a Toronto-based mixologist and  advocate for the at-home bartender — of Liquid Culture.

Ingredients

1.5 oz Royalmount Gin
3/4 oz White Cranberry Juice
2 oz Fever-Tree Premium Tonic
2 drops Rose Water
Garnish: 3 Cucumber Ribbons, Juniper Berries
Optional Garnish: Freeze spray roses in ice cubes overnight

Instructions

1. Line a balloon glass with cucumber ribbons, 2 drops of rose water and ice.
2. Layer the rest of the cocktail by adding the gin, white cranberry juice and top with tonic water. Stir to combine.  

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